Well, it’s October so that means it’s officially Autumn, right? This has to be our favourite time of year with all the crunchy leaves, crisp air, pumpkin patches, bonfires and lots of pumpkin spice lattes.
My daughter's favourite thing about Autumn is watching the leaves go from vibrant greens to deeper shades of yellows, oranges and brown. Is there anything better than going out in your wellies and kicking your way through leaves. Better yet, grabbing a bucket to go on an autumnal scavenger hunt? Well, that's exactly what we did as soon as the leaves started to fall.
We found so many Autumn treasures on our scavenger hunt such as sticks, snail shells, "gems" also known as stones, pieces of bark and the biggest leaf you've ever seen. Honestly, it was the size of my daughters head! But after collecting all our treasures from our scavenger hunting, we knew that we wanted to take advantage of all these finds with a little creativity.
Leaf printing is so much fun, it’s one of those things that I think is really easy and diverse – you can leaf print onto most things, from clothing to pottery, canvas to paper. But today we are going to keep it simple and use paper to do some leaf printing. This was super easy doing some Autumn leaf printing this afternoon and they all turned out so well. Basically all you need to is wash your leaves, allow them to dry, paint them and then print! It's always a great craft to do when you want to occupy little ones and you want to take full advantage of all the beautiful surroundings outside.
For for this leaf printing craft you'll need:
A small selection of washed leaves
Chunky paintbrushes
A4 paper or card
1. Pick a leaf, any leaf. Don’t pick ones that are too frayed or beaten up, you want mostly whole and the bigger the better. The easiest way to prepare you leaves for crafts are to quickly wash the leaves in lukewarm water to rid of dust, dirt and insects. Let leaves drip-dry before using them.
2. Paint your leaf in your chosen colour. For our leaves we used the colours red, orange and brown to make our printing autumnal. I would also recommend that you use a washable cover when doing the autumn leaf printing so the paint doesn't stain any fabric. Make sure you get all of the leaf, from the top to the bottom even the stalk!
3. Then carefully pick up your leaf and place on the paper or card and lightly press but be careful not to press too hard so the leave won't move around and smudge the print.
4. Gently peel away the leaf to reveal the leaf print. Then set aside to dry. It should also be mention that you can only really use a leaf one or twice before it becomes a soggy, smushy leaf.
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